The rodeo cowboy is one of the most evocative images of the Wild West. The master of the frontier, he is renowned for his masculinity, toughness, and skill. A Wilder West returns to rodeo's small-town roots to explore how rodeo simultaneously embodies and subverts our traditional understandings of power relations between man and nature, women and men, settlers and Aboriginal peoples.

An important contact zone – a chaotic and unpredictable place of encounter – rodeo has challenged expected social hierarchies, bringing people together across racial and gender divides to create friendships, rivalries, and unexpected intimacies. At the rodeo, Aboriginal riders became ... Read morelocal heroes, and rodeo queens spoke their minds.